In Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist has been accused of supporting Medicare Advantage cuts. His denial is supported by a PolitiFact ruling. All that and more in today's PolitiFact Oregon Roundup.
(Chris O'Meara/Associated Press)

Political news this week focused largely on the type of economic inequality issues that were rife during the 2012 presidential campaign. A new PolitiFact Oregon offering, in fact, looks at just that type of claim; namely, that women earn less money than their male counterparts.

But today’s PolitiFact Oregon Roundup, while including a bit of economic material, takes a quick jaunt to Florida -- where a hotly contested gubernatorial campaign is shaping up – for some much needed non-economic relief.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Rick Scott said in a Spanish-language editorial that “seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage are going to see an average premium increase between $50 and $90 per month.

PolitiFact Florida’s check found that the estimate Scott used came from an insurance lobbying group seeking to maximize government reimbursements for private Advantage plans. Those same numbers, it found, were also based on government data that wasn’t finalized at the time they were issued. Scott’s claim merited a Mostly False.

Charlie Crist, formerly a Republican who is now a Democrat and challenging Scott, has been all over the map on many issues, including the federal health care law. The Republican Party of Florida criticized him recently for now supporting “cuts to the Medicare Advantage program.”

Despite wavering elsewhere, the check found, Crist has remained solid in criticizing Medicare Advantage cuts over the years. “He specifically said he opposed the reductions in 2009 and 2010, and he still opposes them today,” it found in rating the claim False.

The Senate Majority PAC, an outside group formed in 2011 to support Democratic Senate candidates, launched a recent attack in Arkansas on Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who’s up against Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor. In noting that corporate special interests are spending big to smear Pryor, the ad asked, “Why? Before Congress, Cotton got paid handsomely working for insurance companies and corporate interests.”

PolitiFact National's check found that Cotton has never actually worked for an insurance company or served as a consultant for one. But what’s truth in campaign season, right? The claim was rated False.

Fox News’ The Five panelist Eric Bolling recently had this to say about the economy: “Of all the jobs President Obama claims to have created since he started, only 38.5 percent are women. So. 61.5 percent have gone to men.”

Bolling, as it turned out, was right on the numbers, but wrong when it came to context. “…The gender balance of job creation has more to do with cyclical economic factors than anything the administration did or didn’t do,” according to the story. The claim was rated Half True.

Conservative pundit Genevieve Wood had her own take on economic inequality. In a couple of television appearances recently, she argued that some numbers widely accepted – the gender pay gap, for instance -- are wrong. “Young women today in metropolitan areas, for example, are actually outperforming males in that same category all over the country.”

Wood got most, but not all, of her facts correct, according to PunditFact's story. The comparison also holds true, it added, because childless, single young women tend to have more education and qualify for higher paying jobs. Her claim merited a Mostly True.

Thoughts on today’s roundup? Anything we should have included but didn’t? Let us know and we’ll get right on it.